11 wildly successful people who dropped out of high school

More than 1.3 million students drop out of high school every year in the US, making them ineligible for 90% of jobs in America, according to DoSomething.org.

But while it's by no means considered the path to success — Tumblr founder David Karp dropped out of high school at the age of 15 and told Forbes he doesn't recommend it to others since he missed out on so much — some people made the most of their time outside the hallowed halls of high school.

Here is the special breed of super successful people that overcame their "high-school dropout" status and turned the world on its head.

Aretha Franklin dropped out at 15.

Regarded as a child prodigy, Franklin recorded her first tracks at age 14 and performed with her father's traveling Gospel revival show, according to Bio. She dropped out of high school at 15 to care for her first child.

Joe Lewis dropped out at 15.

Lewis dropped out of high school at 15 to run his father's catering business, Tavistock Banqueting, and is currently worth about $5.3 billion, according to Forbes.

The businessman — who works from his yacht most of the year — owns a planned community in Lake Nona, near Orlando, which is now one of the fastest-growing developments in America and houses a medical city that includes the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and Health Sciences Campus, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Orlando VA Medical Center, and a University of Florida Research and Academic Center.

As the main investor in Tavistock Group, Lewis owns more than 200 companies, according to Forbes, including London Premiership soccer team Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs), a stake in UK's largest pub operator, Mitchell's & Butlers plc, and approximately 135 restaurants and various resorts throughout the world.

Philip Emeagwali dropped out at 13.

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Called an "unsung hero of the internet," the supercomputer scientist dropped out of high-school in Nigeria due to war conditions and lack of tuition money. According to Time, he was considered a math prodigy and continued to study on his own, earning an equivalency diploma and later a scholarship to Oregon College of Education in the US.

In 1987, Emeagwali came up with the formula for allowing a large number of computers to communicate at once. The record-breaking experiment was a practical and inexpensive way to use machines to speak to each other all over the world.

Quentin Tarantino dropped out at 15.

The Oscar winner attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, until he dropped out at the age of 15 and started working as an usher at an adult film theater while taking acting classes, according to Bio.

While working at the Video Archives in his early 20s, Tarantino wrote the scripts for "True Romance" and "Natural Born Killers," but it was his directorial debut in "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992 that won him wide critical acclaim.

At 92, Murdock is somewhat of a health nut — he told the New York Times he swore off red meat long ago and eats as many as 20 fruits and vegetables a day, going so far as to pulverize banana peels and orange rinds into the smoothies he drinks two to three times a day — and he says he wants to live forever.

George Foreman dropped out at 15.

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Foreman dropped out of school in the ninth grade and ran with street gangs until he joined the Job Corps in 1965, where he first started training as a boxer, according to Bio.

He has been inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame as a two-time World Heavyweight Champion and Olympic gold medalist.

Most of Foreman's fortune came after his boxing career as a spokesperson for Russell Hobbs Inc.'s fat-reducing grill called the George Foreman Grill, which has earned him an estimated net worth of $250 million, according to TheRichest.

James H. Clark dropped out at 16.

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The self-made billionaire American businessman and cofounder of Netscape dropped out of high school at 16 after getting into some trouble and joined the US Navy, where he earned his high school equivalency degree, began learning about electronics, and made money on the side by loan-sharking cash to other recruits at interest rates of 40%, according to Forbes.

Considered the first Internet billionaire, Clark's timely investments in companies like Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have earned him an estimated current worth of about 1.85 billion, according to Forbes.

His philanthropic efforts include financially backing the Japanese dolphin hunting documentary, "The Cove" and pledging $60 million toward science research in 2013.